Embracing The Savage - Part 10
Given the onset of winter, where I've been driving and the rudimentary nature of my camping gear, most of the last month or so has been spent indoors at night. Now I'm near the coast. Far from snow although it still gets close to 0 celsius. I can get wilder. Winter by the shore.
So from Crescent City I head south, stopping at Battery Point Lighthouse and entering Redwood National and State Park. Or is that Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park? It's not really clear and such distinctions only exist in the human imagination.
The Pacific coast is a marvel. Rock, Sand, Water, Fog and Forest. All woven together in a tapestry of...(Fuck. Can't use that word anymore since it's been captured, right?) Let's try again. Rock, Sand, Water, Fog and Forest. All recalling a primordial landscape where humans have yet to emerge. I spend the day exploring the area before setting up camp by the beach.
There isn't a person in sight with only the moon there to give me company as the fog rolls in and out.
Although it's winter, I'm only eating once or twice a day. The next morning I pack-up my tent and head to a nearby settlement for breakfast. A deer greets me along the way. This day is clearer than the last so I pass the time in the area observing the ocean and contemplating the depth of it's mystery.
Another night by the shore and I head to a town called Arcata to pick up supplies. It seems like another posh California town or at least that's the vibe the super market gives off. I chat with a middle-aged man who tells me he's accomplished everything in life, but now, on reading Castaneda, he realises how little he knows.
Continuing the zig-zag between in-land and coast, I find a campground I don't even know where. It's late at night and I park next to my car. There are plant fences separating campers; of which there are only two. A couple from Seattle. The kind of people that would voluntarily spend December in the chilly California coastline are a special kind. We gather around a fire. He worked for years with the Peace Corps in Georgia and is fluent in the language. He's now at an NGO and appears to just want a simple, peaceful life. His girlfriend clearly sees more potential in him and wants something richer for him. That's the thing about America, most of the "decent" people are brow-beaten from dealing with the bizarro-land antics of less pleasing people. In the morning, I see this:
The campsite is on a cliff. I wander to an edge and peer into the abyss. Being one step or loose rock away from death has me wondering. What if I'm already dead? Who is standing on this precipice?
If death doesn't make you feel small. The Redwoods certainly will. Driving through the forest among impossibly tall trees, a sense that nothing humans endeavour to do by dextrously manipulating already existing raw materials can match what the planet and it's mysterious driving forces do with them.
Although I have a phone, I barely use it and am throughouly and gladly lost. So much so that I stumble into a State Prison. An astonishing setting for one. Might the Redwoods actually rehabilitate?
Juxtaposing the incarcerated prisoners, I eventually drive to a river and see a lone fisherman in the distance. Is he freer than the men inside? Am I? I stand near another stretch of the river and take in the evening sky, but can still see him. After intense solitude, simply being aware of another human can satiate the yearning for connection. Maybe it's even better that way.
The days are short, so there's only so long one can linger even though almost every part of the land I've been driving through beckons me to stay. As one person said of the United States of America "It's a land starved of spiritual connection."
